September 1, 2002: On the verge of the first anniversary, and a commemorative media frenzy that may send the country into diabetic shock one can either retreat to the hills like a Chinese sage, or contemplate for a moment, from near or far, Ground Zero.There is nothing there. The rubble has been scraped clean, so that the area now truly resembles its eponym, the Ground Zero of a nuclear attack; the empty air once occupied by the towers is almost palpable. And yet the utter nothingness of the scene is calming: a refuge of silence, an anti-memorial that is the best possible memorial, a still center around which swirls a world and a year of continual and continually mutating madnesses. Since Sept. 11, the American national obsession has been the elineationof how "we" are different. It seems that every magazine or newspaper article, regardless of subject-- marital relations, video games, summervacations, the new fiction-- must now include at least one paragraphdemonstrating how its subject, or the future of its subject, has beenirrevocably transformed by that terrible day. "We" has always been a useless generalization in a nation inhabited by a plurality of peoples who have almost nothing in common except for their taste in certain consumer goods and fast food-- a taste now shared by hundreds of millions in other countries who are supposedly not "us." In fact, the word "American," when applied to anything other than the policies of the U.S. government, is nearly always meaningless: there are too many exceptions to the rule.Nevertheless, to indulge in this first-person plural, it is difficult to see how the artifacts and attitudes of Americans have changed at all since Sept. 11. To take an obvious example: More people than ever went to the movies this summer to watch things getting blown up-- even, in the case of "Spider Man," blown up in New York --movies that, according to the commentators on Sept. 12, would never be made again, for reality had overtaken illusion. But somehow, despite disaster and expert readings of the zeitgeist, life and "Spider Man" have a way of going on. And yet, something is indeed different. To put it simply, "we" are thesame, but we are nervous wrecks. In the last year, Americans have become like the novitiates in cults, kept awake and in a state of constant distraction. Or, more precisely, like the captured spy in 1960's movies, whose form of torture is to be tied to a chair in a small room with blaring music and images flashing on the walls. Two powerful forces have combined to drive Americans crazy. On one side, the White House Team. (In this case one cannot, as is usual, personify and refer to an administration by the name of its leader, for George W. Bush has exactly the same relationship to the policies of his government as Britney Spears does to the operations of the Coca-Cola corporation). Like all despotic governments-- and I do not use the word lightly-- they have recognized that the best way to solidify popular support is by exaggerating internal and external threats to the society. On the other side, there is the hyperbolic and hysterical 24-hour news media, continually in need of further sensationalism to keep their audience frozen before the television. Together, the two have created a kind of techno-rave of the disturbing and the frightening, with each new artificial panic blending into the next and erasing the memory of the previous one.We've been driven crazy because every two or three weeks for many months, the F.B.I. or the bizarre Christian fundamentalist Attorney General, John Ashcroft, would announce that another terrorist attack was "imminent" and a "certainty" in the next few days, or this weekend, or next week. So that no American would feel complacent, the targets were spread around the country: the Golden Gate Bridge, the Sears Tower, the Lincoln Memorial, Disney World, the Liberty Bell, and even, god forbid, Universal Studios. Ashcroft, having apparently watched "The Manchurian Candidate" too many times, periodically warned of "sleeper cells" of al-Qaeda terrorists, living anonymously, maybe right next door, who could be awakened at any moment. Nearly every day, airports were evacuated, malls emptied, traffic stalled for hours crawling through checkpoints. We've been driven crazy because, in the first weeks after Sept. 11, the media endlessly fixated on the possibilities and consequences of terrorist biological weapon attacks, and specifically on anthrax. Predictably, this led to some thrill-seeking loner-- a stock character in America-- sending anthrax spores through the mail, spreading fear among all those citizens not in immediate proximity to historical monuments and theme parks. Equally predictably, the White House Team and the subservient media pronounced this to be the work of Arab terrorists, although it was obvious from the first day that the poisoned letters were being sent by one of our own TimothyMcVeigh or Unabomber types-- an international terrorist might releaseanthrax spores in the Washington metro, but he wouldn't mail them to acelebrity-gossip tabloid popular in the supermarkets of the Americanprovinces. (And we now know that the White House Team was so obsessed with finding an Iraqi connection that it actually forbade the F.B.I.-- which is inept enough without outside help-- from pursuing domestic leads.) It still takes months for a letter sent to any branch of the government to arrive, for all their mail, like an American dinner, must be cooked in a microwave. We've been driven crazy because the secret arrest and deportation without trial of thousands of men (the exact number is unknown) for the crime of being Middle Eastern or dark-skinned or speaking a foreign language in a public place-- a group that included Israeli Jews and Indian Sikhs-- was terrifying not only for Muslim Americans, but for millions of legal and illegal residents of non-European origin. Among the Latin Americans I talked with-- poor people with a very hazy idea of Muslims, but an encyclopedic knowledge of immigration laws and practices-- there was a general belief that it would be "first them, and then us." We've been driven crazy because the secret arrests; the pronouncements by Ashcroft that any criticism of the government was an act of treason; the internet postings of lists of university professors who criticized the government; the Presidential proposal to create an army of millions of government informers, composed of postmen, gas and electric meter-readers, pizza delivery men, and anybody else who rings the doorbell; and the warnings from that Grim Reaper, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld (whom Henry Kissinger, of all people, once called "the scariest person I've ever met") about traitors among us leaking classified information, combined to provoke fears of reprisal among those with opinions to express, whether publicly or privately. After all, the bedrock of American democracy is, in theory, freedom of speech. In practice, this has meant that anyone can say anything because no one is listening. Suddenly there was the possibilitythat people like Ashcroft were listening, and that critics would be turned into dissidents, facing tangible repercussions for their intangible ideas. We've been driven crazy by the wars, actual and threatened. It has beenforgotten that on Sept. 10, Bush was an extremely unpopular president. The economic boom of the Clinton years was crashing, and he was generally seen as a fool, the butt of nightly jokes by television comedians; an automaton controlled by his Dr. Mabuse/Dr. No/Dr. Evil vice-president, Dick Cheney; a president who hadn't even been elected, but had taken office in a kind of judicial coup d'etat. The only hope for Bush was a war to rally the nation, as his father had done in his own economic crisis, and it is evident that, if Sept. 11 hadn't occurred, the U.S. would have invaded Iraq late in the year. The Team began talking about it on the first day of the Bush presidency, but they needed to put the administration in place and wait for cooler weather in the desert.Sept. 11 gave them an alternate opportunity. Instead of treating theattack-- as was done in Europe-- as a monstrous crime whose perpetrators were dead but whose accomplices needed to be apprehended, it was immediately categorized as an act of war, a new Pearl Harbor, which it clearly was not. (War, as has often been said, is politics or business by other means: the attempted coercion of the other side to accept one's policies or products or sovereignty. Al-Qaeda, like all revolutionary youth movements, is more concerned with consciousness than political realities, and the Trade Center attack was a kind of grotesque advertisement for itself.) In the absence of a tangible enemy with whom to wage war, the Team quickly confused al-Qaeda with the Taliban in the public mind, launched the so-called "war on terrorism"-- which was rather like firebombing Sicily to eradicate the Mafia heroin trade-- proclaimed new and thrilling victories every day, and slaughtered many more innocent people than died on Sept. 11.As for Osama bin Laden or any other important al-Qaeda member, the war on terrorism never did, in Bush's famous John Wayne words, "smoke 'em out and hunt 'em down." But no matter: the media were delighted with the capture of a pathetic California teenager, whom they quickly named "The Rat" as they clamored for his execution, until his family hired some expensive lawyers--the American Way of Justice-- and saved his life. But no matter: Ashcroft soon interrupted televison programs to announce via satellite from Moscow the sensational arrest of a sinister-looking man with an Arab name who was about to explode radioactive "dirty" bombs in unnamed American cities. This led to days of televised delirium about how easy it is to make such bombs and their potential death-tolls and how we can or cannot protect ourselves, until it was revealed that the nefarious dirty bomber was a Puerto Rican street gang member from Chicago who had converted to Islam in prison, and whose sinister plot had consisted entirely of looking up "radioactive bomb" on an internet search engine. But no matter: With nothing panic-inducing coming from Afghanistan, theWhite House Team scanned the horizon for other places to imagine wagingwar. Indonesia? The Philippines? Syria? Plans were proposed, gloated over, and forgotten. Then, having already refused to support the negotiations, initiated by Clinton, between North and South Korea, the Team suddenly, out of nowhere and on the basis of nothing, began threatening to drop the Big One on North Korea-- the first time the U.S. government has ever spoken of an offensive "first strike" with a nuclear weapon. This was followed by Bush's famous "Axis of Evil" speech-- the Axis, as you may have forgotten, consisted of the closely allied nations of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, but somehow omitted the Vandals, the Huns, and the Visigoths-- which was so scary that my children seriously asked whether it wasn't a good idea to move to Costa Rica. And now of course the Team is waging a weird simulacrum of war in Iraq, in the manner of the tactical board games that geeks used to play before the Age of Nintendo: every day they announce different battle strategies, complete with maps, which are followed by explanations--apparently based on telepathy-- of what Saddam's defensive strategies will be. But most of all, more than the nightmares of sleepwalking terrorists,secret police, nuclear strikes, and the junk mail of doom, in the last year we've been driven crazy by money. During the Clinton years, for the first time, the middle class put most of their savings-- particularly their retirement pension savings-- in the stock market. Now they have lost half of it-- and in many cases much more than half. And the collapse of the stock market has meant that many millions have either lost their jobs or must work at severely reduced wages. This, more than anything, has been devastating in a country founded on the "pursuit of happiness" and the dream of the bright future. Typically, the White House Team's solution to this crisis is to cut the taxes of those who earn more than $2 million a year. And they not only want to cut corporate taxes, but also make the cuts retroactive so that the corporations would get back the money they'd paid over the last twelve years. (As there is still supposedly an opposition party called the Democrats, they prudently chose a dozen, and not fifty or a hundred years.)

Is it possible to understand the United States? Europeans tend to think of it merely as a richer, more vulgar, and more violent version of Europe. But the two have little in common, other than large numbers of white people. The United States is a Banana Republic with a lot of money. It is perhaps the most perfect form of Banana Republic. Its generals do not have to seize power, or even concern themselves with those tedious, domestic, non-military matters for, regardless of who the ostensible leader of the government is, the generals always get what they want: lots and lots of toys to play with. (Often the Congress even gives them toys they don't want.) Moreover, like the generals of a Banana Republic, they have no great desire-- since the Vietnam War-- to kill people with those toys, as that might mean that some of their own boys would be killed. They're equipment fetishists, and all they want is the latest hardware and elaborate maneuvers in which to try it out. Their kind of war is Grenada-- the only war they've won in the last fifty years-- and their reluctance to go to war continues to be the greatest force for peace in the nation.If one considers so-called "intelligence" as part of defense, approximately two-thirds of the American tax dollar goes to the generals. That naturally leaves very little for anything else, which is why the U.S., in terms of infrastructure and general well-being, is the Banana Republic of the industrialized nations, with 25% of its children living in poverty, the worst education system, the worst mass transit, no socialized medicine, the highest rates of illiteracy and infant mortality and teenage pregnancy, homeless millions, and small cities that look as though they've just been through the plague. Like that of any Banana Republic, the government is largely controlled by the rich. This has become even more exaggerated since the rise of the dominance of television in American politics. One now needs vast amounts of money to buy television advertisements in order to get elected-- a minor position in local government costs a million dollars, the last presidential campaign cost a billion-- and those who manage to get elected must then spend the majority of their time raising the money for their re-elections.That money, needless to say, comes from the people or corporations who have it, and those people or corporations, needless to say, expect things in return. (American politics would be completely transformed overnight if television campaign advertisements were banned, as they are in most of the world, but that would entail the system voluntarily deciding to destroy itself.)Nevertheless, before the Age of Bush, there was always the assumption that a few things had to be done for the good of the people who are actually casting the votes. This was partially because one needed those votes again, and partially because the non-elected government officials tended to come from the ranks of civil servants who, after all, had decided to dedicate their lives to serving the citizens. But Banana Republics are sometimes ripe and sometimes rotten, and this White House Team is something entirely new. Nearly all of them, having worked for Bush Sr., spent the Clinton years in the executive offices of oil, energy, and pharmaceutical corporations. The Chief of Staff was the primary lobbyist in Washington for the auto industry against pollution controls, and Condoleezza Rice-- the Team's own Xena the Warrior-- even has an oil tanker named after her. In the year 2000 alone, the year before they joined Junior's Board of Directors, nearly every one of them-- including Colin Powell-- earned between $20 and $40 million. Most of them have a net worth of at least $100 million, and many have much more. Considering that Bush wasn't even elected, his Team represents a corporate hostile takeover of the U.S. government.Let us drill into the skull of George W. Bush. He might not be as stupid as it is widely assumed, but he is a man without curiosity, who doesn't read books or newspapers, watch television, go to the movies, or listen to any kind of music. (He is much like Osama bin Laden, another formerly dissolute son of a wealthy family-- not so coincidentally, close friends and business partners with the Bushes-- except that Osama presumably reads one book.) Before being elected president, Bush had only left the country verybriefly, once or twice: a business trip to Saudi Arabia, a beach vacation in Mexico. On his first trip to Paris this year, he declared: "Jacques Chirac tells me the food is fantastic here, and I'm going to find out." He has spent his entire life in a world as provincial as that of the House of Saud (and evidently one where France is never mentioned): a tiny circle of Texas oil and energy millionaires who repeatedly rescued him from his financial disasters because he was the President's son and a nice guy and one of them. In the manner of patrician families, he believes, as his father did, that he and his Team know what's best for the country and the world, and they have no patience for tiresome other opinions. When they had to formulate an energy policy for the administration, they assembled a group of energy corporation executives, without bothering to include even a token environmentalist or consumer advocate or labor leader; and then they refused to release the proceedings. When they recently organized a conference to discuss the economic crisis, only large contributors to the Republican Party and small-town Republican businessmen were invited. The Team believes in Secret Government, which has been epitomized by the bizarre disappearances of Vice-President Cheney-Mabuse-- supposedly to protect him from terrorists, though the Team's spokesperson Bush makes frequent public appearances-- which would always lead to speculation that he was dead, until he (or perhaps a double) miraculously turned up again on television. This is why they couldn't care less if the rest of the world-- even their own generals-- is opposed to an invasion of Iraq. They know that men must do what they have to do, and some of them, Bush himself included, truly believe that God has chosen them-- though of course it is a different God from the one who has chosen bin Laden. If you drill into Bush's skull, what you mainly find is a pool of oil.It's difficult to understand Bush-- especially when he speaks-- but it is somewhat easier if one must realizes that he sees the whole worldexclusively in terms of the production and consumption of oil. Long before Sept. 11 he was discussing the overthrow of the Taliban so that Unocal could build a pipeline through Afghanistan from Kazakhstan to Pakistan. (The current U.S. Special Envoy to Afghanistan-- the equivalent of ambassador-- was Unocal's chief consultant on the project.) The only country in the Western Hemisphere that has attracted his attention is Venezuela, where he tried to overthrow Hugo Chavez, because that's where the oil is. He has no interest in Palestine and Israel, because they have no oil. Libya is notably not a member of the Axis of Evil, because Qaddafi has made arrangements with the oil companies. Europe is a petty annoyance that doesn't even have any oil; Russia has oil and Bush said that when he looked deep into Putin's eyes he knew he was a good man. The totalitarian terrorist-supporting nation of Saudi Arabia is our friend because the oil flows; the totalitarian terrorist-supporting nation of Iraq is our enemy because the oil can't flow. But if you drill to the core of George W. Bush's being, there is something else, something that seems so hyperbolic, that so smacks of the cliches of old Communist propaganda, that it is hardly believable. And yet the evidence of his term as the Governor of Texas, and the daily evidence of his presidency proves that it is true. Once one clears away the rhetoric that he is handed to read out loud, it is apparent that Bush believes that his role, his only role, as President of the United States is to help his closest friends. When he was Governor, he took over countless public funds and operations, eliminated the public oversight committees, and simply handed the money or the work to his golf buddies. Houston, almost overnight, became the most polluted city in the U.S. because he introduced voluntary compliance with environmental laws-- and, needless to say, no one complied. Now that he is President, his Team has completely re-staffed the middle-level of the bureaucracy-- the place where the day-to-day and tangible laws are effected-- and they, in turn, have changed innumerable rules and regulations, not to the benefit of big business in general, as might be expected, but as specific gifts to the oil, energy, mining, logging, and pharmaceutical corporations run by the Bush crowd. Every day, in the back pages of the newspaper, there is yet another story that strains credulity. I'll mention only two: No doubt at the urging of Rumsfeld, a former pharmaceutical CEO, the Team eliminated the law that required drugcompanies to perform separate tests on medicine that is prescribed forchildren-- why should they spend the money? And, only a few days after it came out in the press that there were massive Enron-style accounting"irregularities" in the Haliburton Corporation when Cheney was its CEO, the White House announced that the $100 million project to expand the prison at Guantanamo Bay (in expectation of more Afghan peasants to be held forever without trial) was awarded to the Haliburton Corporation. One must go back to the 19th century to find this level of oblivious corruption in the White House.

After Sept. 11, many intellectuals abroad, and many others, privately or publicly, celebrated the attack-- after some perfunctory hand-wringing about loss of life-- as a humiliating blow against the American Empire, and a just reward for the decades of American hegemony and aggression. One year after, it is worth remembering the concrete facts of the consequences of that day: Because the attack happened early in the morning, the nearly 3,000 people who died were generally of three types: first, poor people-- most of them black, Hispanic, or recent immigrants-- who worked as janitors, handymen, food deliverers, and so on, in the towers and the adjoining buildings; second, low-ranking white-collar workers-- the secretaries and clerks who had to be in the office before the bosses arrived; and third, firemen, policemen, and other rescue workers. Very few titans of capitalism orpeople in power died that day.The devastation of the downtown business area and the subsequent collapse of the tourist industry caused at least 100,000 people, most of them poor, to lose their jobs.The secret arrests and deportations ruined the lives of some thousands of Muslim men and their families-- not a single one of whom had any connection to the hijackings-- and brought continuing fear to hundreds of thousands of others.Immigration to the U.S. has essentially ground to a halt, with theconsequent hardships to countless divided families, and the millions inThird World countries who depend on the money earned by relatives in the U.S. Among many other specific cases, 100,000 Mexican and Canadian students who commuted to colleges and universities across the border can no longer attend classes; for the Mexicans especially, this education was their hope for decent employment.Thousands of innocent people in Afghanistan are dead, and tens ofthousands displaced. The potential deaths in Iraq or elsewhere remain to be seen.George W. Bush, a fool on Sept. 10, became a powerful and popular leader. He and his Team are the most globally frightening White House in modern times-- far more frightening than Nixon or Reagan-- and they can now do anything they want. Hardly a blow against the Empire, the Trade Center attack created one of the most arrogant and aggressive administrations in American history, one that has already demonstrated its impatience with, or repugnance for, such foundations of American democracy as free speech, open elections, due process of law, and the separation of church and state. And their actions will have incalculable ramifications, large and small, throughout the world, from the acceleration of global warming to the end of birth control programs in Third World villages. For the White House Team, the hijacked planes were a blessing from the sky.

A few days ago, a man listed as one of the Sept. 11 dead was discovered in a psychiatric hospital, a total amnesiac who has no idea what happened to him or what has happened since. On the same day, George W. Bush told an interviewer what the "saddest thing" has been about his presidency: he now only has time to jog three miles a day.posted by Philippe De Jonckheere at 6:02 PM